Oxbridge medicine

Hi everyone,

Is there anyone that is studying medicine at Oxbridge? I am now currently in year 12, and I want to do more supercurricular work for medicine to prepare myself for interviews and personal statements. What are some of the recommendations that I can start to do? Also, I got 12 grade 9s at GCSE and I am predicted 3A*s, assuming that I will not flop my UCAT, what are my chances of getting into Oxbridge for med? Here are some of the extra things I do as well:

- volunteering at an hospice for 3 hours every week
- online work experience with bsms
- GP admin work experience
- gold in ukmt senior maths challenge (highest score in the whole college)
- highest score for the kangaroo maths challenge at my college

Reply 1

freshhoney

Hi - not quite there yet but have gotten an offer. Ignoring the UCAT, all of your stuff outside of that looks very good so far! You have amazing GCSEs and loads of work experience already which is good. One small thing I would recommend is make sure you have some sort of notes for how your work experience/volunteering went so that later in interview season it’s easier to remember specific details to use to answer questions and reflect on.

Other than that, I think you should try looking more into the science of medicine and see whatever interests you! This can be through reading books, listening to podcasts or reading news articles. It’s very useful for your personal statement and therefore may come into interviews as well.

Reply 2

misdjan

Original post

by freshhoney

Hi - not quite there yet but have gotten an offer. Ignoring the UCAT, all of your stuff outside of that looks very good so far! You have amazing GCSEs and loads of work experience already which is good. One small thing I would recommend is make sure you have some sort of notes for how your work experience/volunteering went so that later in interview season it’s easier to remember specific details to use to answer questions and reflect on.
Other than that, I think you should try looking more into the science of medicine and see whatever interests you! This can be through reading books, listening to podcasts or reading news articles. It’s very useful for your personal statement and therefore may come into interviews as well.

Thank you so much and congrats on your offer! You must've worked really hard for it! I will definitely look into the books and stuff. I just wanted to know if you have done an EPQ, and do you recommend me doing it? Also, what do you think you did that made you stand out and get an offer? Thank you!

Reply 3

freshhoney

Original post

by misdjan

Ahh thank you for the kind words! I did do an EPQ and I enjoyed it as personally I found that it didn’t take up too much time as my school had timetabled classes to get it done with. I would only recommend doing it if there is a topic you are genuinely interested in and you feel like you have enough spare time. Honestly it doesn’t affect Oxbridge med that much either, mine only got a brief mention in the interview.

I’m not sure exactly how I stood out but what I was often told and tried to do was think out loud as much as possible. They throw a lot of questions at you in a short amount of time and so the best thing you can do is explain your thought process, whether that be an actual answer or even just explaining why you find the question so difficult to come up with answer for. Honestly I think this just comes with practicing yapping to as many people as possible when it comes to interview season.

Good luck with the process!!